I should probably start by admitting I once bombed an interview with Sony Digital Cameras so badly that I’m fairly sure they still use it as a training example. This was 2006; I’d applied for a Southern field marketing rep position. The format was simple: pick a camera from the range and present it as if to a retail audience.
I picked a compact.
The moment I got to the slide and saw the hiring manager’s face, I knew I’d fucked up. A field marketing rep for Sony Digital Cameras, presenting a point-and-shoot to a panel of product managers who lived and breathed DSLRs. But they made me do the whole presentation anyway - ten minutes of explaining the virtues of a camera that cost a third of what anyone serious would buy. Bastards.
Anyway. Five years at Dixons in Canterbury (1998 - 2003) before that, selling cameras to people who mostly didn’t know what they wanted. I have opinions about megapixels. Too many opinions, probably.
So when Instagram launched this Wednesday, my first thought was: why would anyone want worse photos?
The app
It’s iPhone only. You take a photo, pick a filter - X-Pro II, Lomo-fi, 1977, that sort of thing - and it makes your phone photo look like a Polaroid. Square format, can’t change it. Then you share it to your feed, or cross-post to Facebook or Twitter.
25,000 people downloaded it on day one, apparently.
My Canon PowerShot S90 takes better photos than my iPhone 4. Obviously it does. The S90 has a proper lens, shoots RAW, handles low light properly. The iPhone’s 5MP camera is fine for snaps but I wouldn’t print anything from it.
The bit I didn’t expect
I’ve been using Flickr to share photos with Canterbury Harriers - my running club. The process goes: run, take photos, get home, find the cable, transfer to laptop, wait for Flickr to upload, post the link to the forum. By Tuesday nobody remembers what we’re looking at.
I downloaded Instagram and posted a photo from this morning’s run. Took about thirty seconds. Got three comments before I’d finished my coffee.
The photos are worse. Noticeably worse. But the sharing isn’t.
What I can’t figure out
Here’s where I’m stuck. The filters aren’t making bad photos good. They’re making bad photos look deliberately bad - the grain, the vignetting, the weird colour shifts. It’s an aesthetic. And somehow that works? People seem to like it.
I keep thinking about this from a publishing angle. Visual content is expensive. You need photographers, or you pay for stock, or your site looks cheap. User-generated photos have always been rubbish quality.
But if rubbish quality becomes a style choice… if “shot on a phone” becomes its own aesthetic… that changes something. I’m not sure what yet.
Instagram probably won’t be the thing that matters. It’s iPhone only, which rules out most people. But someone’s going to figure out how to make this work at scale. Mobile-first photo sharing with low friction and a built-in excuse for the quality.
My S90 is still taking better photos. But they’re sitting on a memory card while I post blurry squares of my breakfast.
I’m not sure how I feel about that.